Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" I'm your host, Anne Johnson. And my new sidekick is Lil Scratch, the netbook that lets me blog from school!

I could blog from my school computer. But honestly, given the content of this site, would you do that? Maybe when I'm tenured.

A few weeks ago a lurid story emerged from Philadelphia about a house full of animal bones, and an altar made of turtle bones, and all sorts of weird animal abuse on display. The "experts" on the Philly police force concluded that some sort of ritual slaughter was going on there. Duh. But the implication is that the so-called ritual slaughter was for the purposes of a religion of some sort.

We at "The Gods Are Bored" have no idea what exactly was happening in that house. We're just ticked that so much hoo hah was made over it.

In a city the size of Philadelphia (especially when you add its suburbs in PA and NJ), nary a day  goes by when someone, somewhere, is torturing an animal. You've got your dog fighting, your cockfighting, your road kills, your pet hoarders, and your research labs. You've got cats half starved in dumpsters and poorly-bred puppies in posh pet shops. For the love of fruit flies, you've got Vietnamese fighting fish in 6-ounce cups! can't even move their fins!

None of this makes the news ... unless the hoarding is severe. But stick an altar in it, and wow. That's news.

We at "The Gods Are Bored" go on record as saying that we live in the 21st century, and animals should be treated humanely by all religious and secular people. Does your deity need a bloody dove to make Him happy? If so, find a new deity. If you are using worship as an excuse to torture animals ... get a life and a new deity.

Aren't there at least a few praise and worship pantheons out there that don't need the screams of dying animals to appease them?

In the meantime, the Philly press should be covering better stories and not making a fuss about an empty house with some bones in it. This is a city that records more than 300 murders a year. I guess writing about that gets boring.


The moral of today's sermon: Be kind to animals, and if you're not, don't blame some deity. Times change, and smart deities change with them.

Now it's time to go to night school. Smart money says Mr. Bigwand will be bragging about living through a massive earthquake by using his superior ingenuity.